Times are a-changin’ ... again

Saturday

Nov 10, 2012 at 3:15 AM

A new generation may now be calling the shots

“The Times They Are a-Changin’” was the third studio album by American singer-songwriter Bob Dylan. It was released in 1964, midstream of a decade of racial unrest, rising poverty, social change and a growing anti-war movement that relished in tunes such as “The Draft Dodger Rag,” by another protest singer, Phil Ochs. It was the generation of love, sex and flower power.

Today that generation is coming of age and with it, the times they are a-changin ... again.

On Tuesday for the first time, voters approved same-sex marriage by popular vote. It happened in Maine and Maryland. In Washington state and Colorado, “voters set up a showdown with federal authorities by legalizing recreational use of marijuana,” as The Associated Press put it.

In another gay-rights victory, according to the AP, Minnesota voters defeated a proposed constitutional amendment that would have banned same-sex marriage in the state. Similar measures were approved in 30 other states, most recently in North Carolina in May.

All this argues that the free spirit and socially libertarian nature of the 1960s is coming of age. And in doing so, it is moving to seize the day.

But gay rights and legalizing recreational use of pot are not the only areas flower power is showing its muscle.

Oklahoma voters decided it was time for real equality among the races. There, they approved a measure that eliminates all affirmative action programs in state government hiring, education and contracting practices. Similar steps have been taken previously in Arizona, California, Michigan, Nebraska and Washington, according to the AP.

In Michigan, flower power helped defeat a first-of-its-kind ballot initiative that would have enshrined collective bargaining rights in the state constitution, notes the AP. It is just one more blow to the union movement which was once cherished by moms and dads of Haight-Ashbury’s legions.

There was a time, well within the memories of older baby boomers, when such votes would have been heretical — a strike against the moral fiber of the nation. But for much of the country that time has ebbed.

Those who came of age in the late 1950s and 1960s were raised during a starkly different time than their parents. War was no longer a noble cause and government oppression was seen emanating from Washington, not Moscow. Instead of waiting for societal mores to change in an incremental fashion, this generation became impatient to the task. Rather than protest and picket as was once the fashion, they have learned to take their issues to the polls and to lobby others to their cause — especially today’s college-age voters.

This has resulted in a tide of tolerance and acceptance that appears to be working itself across the nation, one election after another. It is one that has also encompassed support for abortion, access to contraception and an openness to sexual issues in general.

One reason for Tuesday’s Democratic Party victories may be a recognition of this changing tide. If so, Republicans might be well served by a bit of pruning on the extremes in order to allow the party’s root system to be renewed and eventually broaden its reach.